jeudi 15 septembre 2011

SEE [OBSERVE], JUDGE, ACT

This is a challenge. We had a presentation yesterday that was very deep and very provocative. It had to bring us to a place where we might be a little uncomfortable, but where there are some truths that we don't normally touch in our lives with regard to the Blessed Mother at La Salette. We were directed to remember that what brings us to appreciate the beauty of a person is not so much what we see as it is the combination of at least the three basic dimensions mentioned above in the title. The first one is to see. For many of us, seeing is believing. We even have a State in America that has the motto, "show me." What we were asked to consider yesterday was that seeing was just the beginning. Seeing has to be asccompanied by an act of the mind that helps us to know what it is that we are seeing. So, in the fact of the Apparition, we have the children seeing. More than seeing, they are processing what it is that they are seeing and the object of their seeing is deepened into observation. They see light; they see a crying lady; they see that she is crying; they see the roses; they see the crucifix; they see her sitting and then standing. They observe that she is beautiful; they observe that she is friendly; they observe that no person could have passed between them and her while she was talking. These are the first steps of a truly deep human experience. After they see her leave, then they pass to the other parts of this human experience.

They make a judgment that they have to talk about it to the adults in their lives. This is not a judgement about the quality of the person whom they had just seen. It was a judgment about what they were going to do. They had to process the value of the experience that they had just had. All of us do this just about every day of our lives. We do it about trite and banal things. We seek meanings about the advertising storm that surrounds us every day. We seek meanings in the ways that people dress and we know that, for instance, to go to a job interview without paying attention the dress protocol required will cost us the job. The reason is simple, the symbols will tell our story more effectively than our words. That is why we constantly look for congruence in our presentation of self. We want to be sure that what we look like is consonant with what we say and the way that we act. This is what made Mary so credible to the children. Everything about her spoke about everything else. Her words, her looks, her clothes and the decorations of her person were so powerfully united and connected that she communicated her inner beauty, her depth of goodness and her absolutely pure truth. When Maximin and Melanie put all that together, they could not be otherwise than convinced that what they had seen was worth retelling. Not just reported, but narrated and communicated from the depths of their hearts. The beauty, the goodness and the truth of the experience are so powerfully compelling that in our day and age, we are still telling the story of the Beautiful Lady with strong conviction and with our lives dedicated to the truth that Mary came to tell us.

We, like the two children have seen. In fact, we are seeing every day. The beauty of the Lady does not leave us. Her goodness is always with us. We hear her voice calling us and inspiring us to act in response to her Son's wishes. We have judged ourselves as needing to be beautiful and good just as she and her son are. So we dedicate our lives to the task of bringing the Message to all corners of the earth. We are grateful that we have been called to see the beauty and the goodness of Our Mother. A beauty that even bitter tears could not take away. For her to call us and take away our fear is a great grace for us. It makes it easier for us to accept her challenge to go and tell her story, OUR story to the rest of her people. So here we are. Back home. Four days away from the anniversary of her visit to us. Let us have a chat with her to see how we are doing. Let us ask her for the grace to keep dedicating ourselves to her more and more strongly every day. Through our love for her and her Son, we will bring good into the world and then we too will be beautiful. Yes, even me!